Northern California – Bodega Bay, Napa Valley, Oroville

The enormous, devastating Mendocino Complex fire in Northern California caused us to change our plans, so instead of staying in Nice, CA on Clear Lake we went to Vacaville and Oroville near Sacramento. While in Vacaville we visited Bodega Bay and did some wine tasting at a few wineries in Napa Valley.

Bodega Bay is located just north of San Francisco and the tiny town of Bodega is where Alfred Hitchcock filmed some scenes of his scary movie “The Birds”.  While there we went to nearby Dillon Beach where dogs are allowed off the leash.

We visited a few wineries in Napa, including Castello di Amorosa where we toured this Medieval castle that took 15 years to build. The owner imported labor and materials from Europe to make it as authentic as possible. We visited the chapel, grand hall and cellars before tasting some of their wines. Donya and I are red wine drinkers, but we so enjoyed the Pinot Blanca that we bought a bottle.

We also attended the “Life is a Cabernet” release party at Silver Oak Winery where we met the artist Thomas Arvid.  His amazing paintings look like photographs. Donya owns two of his artist’s proofs, so we were thrilled to be able to meet him in person. Such a nice man!

The release party was to introduce their 2014 Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, which was quite tasty but didn’t make it home with us.

From Vacaville (Cowtown) we went northeast to Oroville (Goldtown) and stayed at a beautiful, new RV park with the cleanest, nicest showers of any park we’d stayed at, and all sites were concrete pads with grass separating each site. We had grown weary of battling dust and dirt, as most RV parks have gravel or dirt sites, so this was a nice change. The week we spent here was downtime, which gave Donya an opportunity to get lots of work done.

We did drive around Lake Oroville, whose dam made headlines last year when the spillway split open. Water was diverted to the emergency spillway, but it wasn’t designed to handle this much water so the earth around the concrete structure began to erode, threatening to undermine the earthen dam. Fortunately, the rain let up and they were able to lower the lake to a safe level. Both spillways are being repaired and are expected to be ready for the winter rains.

I guess one cannot visit Oroville without mentioning Mother Orange Tree, the oldest orange tree in California and was the beginnings of the citrus industry.